The Architecture of Modern Italy (volume 1)

The Architecture of Modern Italy

SWITZERLAND

Italy 1750

AUSTRIA

Simplon

Veneto Lombardy Novara

Belluno Possagno

Gallarate Bergamo Monza Brescia

Treviso Verona

Milan

Padua

Turin

Trieste

Venice

Mantua

Piedmont Ferrara

Parma Modena

Liguria

Bologna

Genoa

Faenza Carrara Pistoia San Marino Urbino

Florence Livorno Tuscany Follonica

Ancona

Papal States

Montalcino

A D R I AT I C S E A

Perugia

Elba

Civitavecchia

Rome

Tivoli Subiaco

Terracina

Minturno

Gaeta

Caserta

Naples

Portici/Herculaneum Amalfi

SARDINIA

Paestum

TYRRHENIAN SEA

Palermo

Kingdom of Two Sicilies

The Architecture of Modern Italy Volume I: The Challenge of Tradition, 1750–1900 Terry Kirk

Princeton Architectural Press New York

for marcello

Published by Princeton Architectural Press 37 East Seventh Street New York, New York 10003 For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657.

Visit our web site at www.papress.com. © 2005 Princeton Architectural Press All rights reserved Printed and bound in Hong Kong 08 07 06 05 5 4 3 2 1 First edition No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.

Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.

Project Coordinator: Mark Lamster Editing: Elizabeth Johnson, Linda Lee, Megan Carey Layout: Jane Sheinman Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Dorothy Ball, Nicola Bednarek, Janet Behning, Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Russell Fernandez, Clare Jacobson, John King, Nancy Eklund Later, Katharine Myers, Lauren Nelson, Scott Tennent, Jennifer Thompson, and Joseph Weston of Princeton Architectural Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kirk,Terry.

The architecture of modern Italy / Terry Kirk. v. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

Contents: v. 1.The challenge of tradition, 1750–1900 — v. 2.Visions of Utopia, 1900–present.

ISBN 1-56898-438-3 (set : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-56898-420-0 (v. 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-56898-436-7 (v. 2 : alk. paper) 1. Architecture—Italy. 2. Architecture, Modern. I.Title.

NA1114.K574 2005 720'.945—dc22 2004006479

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction

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Chapter 1 Architecture of the Italian Enlightenment, 1750–1800 The Pantheon Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rome of the Nolli Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alessandro Galilei and San Giovanni Laterano . . .

Nicola Salvi and the Trevi Fountain . . . . . . . . . .

Luigi Vanvitelli and the Reggia at Caserta . . . . . .

Fernando Fuga and the Albergo dei Poveri . . . . .

Giovanni Battista Piranesi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Giacomo Quarenghi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Grand Tour and the Impact of Archeology . .

Collecting and Cultural Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Patronage of Pope Pius VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Giuseppe Piermarini and Milan in the Eighteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Venice’s Teatro La Fenice and Conclusions on Neoclassicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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.14 .20 .22 .24 .28 .40 .47 .59 .62 .65 .73

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Chapter 2 Napoleon in Italy, 1800–1815 Napoleon’s Italic Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86 Milan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91 Venice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98 Turin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 Naples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105 Trieste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 The Neoclassical Interior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112 Napoleon’s Interest in Archeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120 Political Restoration and Restitution of Artworks . . . . .123 Napoleonic Neoclassicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125

Chapter 3 Restoration and Romanticism, 1815–1860 Giuseppe Jappelli and the Romantic Ideal . . . . . . . . .

Villa Rivalry:The Borghese and the Torlonia of Rome Italian Opera Stage Design and Theater Interiors . . . .

Antonio Canova’s Temple in Possagno . . . . . . . . . . . .

Pantheon Progeny and Carlo Barabino . . . . . . . . . . .

Romanticism in Tuscany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alessandro Antonelli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Construction in Iron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Architectural Restoration of Monuments . . . . . . . . . .

Revivalism and Camillo Boito . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

.126 .136 .143 .147 .153 .156 .160 .166 .169 .176

Chapter 4 Unification and the Nation’s Capitals, 1860–1900 Turin, the First Capital . . . . . . . . . . . .

Florence, the Interim Capital . . . . . . . .

Naples Risanata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Milan, the Industrial Capital . . . . . . . . .

Cathedral Facades and Town Halls . . . .

Palermo and National Unification . . . .

The Last of Papal Rome . . . . . . . . . . .

Rome, the Capital of United Italy . . . .

Monumental Symbols of the New State A New Urban Infrastructure for Rome .

A National Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rome, a World Capital . . . . . . . . . . . .

Bibliography

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Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .275 Index

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the challenge of tradition, 1750–1900

the context of its own rich historical endowment and against global trends in architecture.

Understanding the works of modern Italy requires meticulous attention to cultural context. Political and social changes, technological advance within the realities of the Italian economy, the development of new building types, the influence of related arts and sciences (particularly the rise of classical archeology), and theories of restoration are all relevant concerns.The correlated cultures of music production, scenography, and industrial design must be brought to bear. Each work is explored in terms of its specific historical moment, uncluttered by anachronistic polemical commentary.

Primary source material, especially the architect’s own word, is given prominence. Seminal latter-day scholarship, almost all written in Italian, is brought together here for the first time. Selected bibliographies for each chapter subheading credit the original thinkers and invite further research.

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1.1 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Pantheon, Rome. Engraving from Vedute di Roma, c. 1748

Chapter 1

architecture of the italian enlightenment, 1750–1800 the pantheon revisited The Pantheon is one of the most celebrated and most carefully studied buildings of Western architecture. In the modern age, as it had been in the Renaissance, the Pantheon is a crucible of critical thinking. Preservation of the Pantheon had been undertaken in the seventeenth century and continued in the eighteenth during the pontificate of Clement XI. Floodwater stains had been removed and some statues placed in the altars around the perimeter. Antoine Derizet, professor at Rome’s official academy of arts, the Accademia di San Luca, praised Clement’s operation as having returned the Pantheon “to its original beauty.” A view of the interior painted by Giovanni Paolo Panini recorded the recent restorations. From a lateral niche, between two cleaned columns, Panini directs our vision away from the Christianized altar out to the sweep of the ancient space.The repeated circles of perimeter, marble paving stones, oculus, and the spot of sunlight that shines through it emphasize the geometrical logic of the rotunda. Panini’s painted view reflects the eighteenth-century vision of the Pantheon as the locus of an ideal geometrical architectural beauty.

Not everything in Panini’s view satisfied the contemporary critical eye, however.The attic, that intermediate level above the columns and below the coffers of the dome, seemed discordant—ill proportioned, misaligned, not structurally relevant. A variety of construction chronologies were invented to explain this “error.”The incapacity of eighteenth-century critics to interpret the Pantheon’s original complexities led them to postulate a theory of its original

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1.2 Giovanni Paolo Panini, Pantheon, c. 1740

the challenge of tradition, 1750–1900

state and, continuing Clement XI’s work, formulate a program of corrective reconstruction.

In 1756, during the papacy of Benedict XIV, the doors of the Pantheon were shut, and behind them dust rose as marble fragments from the attic were thrown down.What may have started as a maintenance project resulted in the elimination of the troublesome attic altogether.The work was carried out in secret; even the pope’s claim of authority over the Pantheon, traditionally the city’s domain, was not made public until after completion. Francesco Algarotti, intellectual gadfly of the enlightened age, happened upon the work in progress and wrote with surprise and irony that “they have dared to spoil that magnificent, august construction of the Pantheon. . . .

They have even destroyed the old attic from which the cupola springs and they’ve put up in its place some modern gentilities.” As with the twin bell towers erected on the temple’s exterior in the seventeenth century, Algarotti did not know who was behind the present work.

The new attic was complete by 1757. Plaster panels and pedimented windows replaced the old attic pilaster order, accentuating lines of horizontality.The new panels were made commensurate in measure to the dome’s coffers and the fourteen “windows” were reshaped as statue niches with cutout figures of statues set up to test the effect.The architect responsible for the attic’s redesign, it was later revealed, was Paolo Posi who, as a functionary only recently hired to Benedict XIV’s Vatican architectural team, was probably brought in after the ancient attic was dismantled. Posi’s training in the baroque heritage guaranteed a certain facility of formal invention. Francesco Milizia, the eighteenth century’s most widely respected architectural critic, described Posi as a decorative talent, not an architectural mind.Whatever one might think of the design, public rancor arose over the wholesale liquidation of the materials from the old attic. Capitals, marble slabs, and ancient stamped bricks were dispersed on the international market for antiquities. Posi’s work at the Pantheon was sharply criticized, often with libelous aspersion that revealed a prevailing sour attitude toward contemporary architecture in Rome and obfuscated Posi’s memory.They found the new attic suddenly an affront to the venerated place.

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Reconsidering Posi’s attic soon became an exercise in the development of eighteenth-century architects in Rome. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the catalytic architectural mind who provided us with the evocative engraving of the Pantheon’s exterior, drew up alternative ideas of a rich, three-dimensional attic of clustered pilasters and a meandering frieze that knit the openings and elements together in a bold sculptural treatment. Piranesi, as we will see in a review of this architect’s work, reveled in liberties promised in the idiosyncrasies of the original attic and joyously contributed some of his own. Piranesi had access to Posi’s work site and had prepared engravings of the discovered brick stamps and the uncovered wall construction, but these were held from public release. In his intuitive and profound understanding of the implications of the Pantheon’s supposed “errors,” Piranesi may have been the only one to approach without prejudice the Pantheon in all its complexity and contradiction.

The polemical progress of contemporary architectural design in the context of the Pantheon exemplifies the growing difficulties at this moment of reconciling creativity and innovation with the past and tradition. History takes on a weight and gains a life of its own.

The polemic over adding to the Pantheon reveals a moment of transition from an earlier period of an innate, more fluid sense of continuity with the past to a period of shifting and uncertain relationship in the present.The process of redefining the interaction of the present to the past, of contemporary creativity in an historical context, is the core of the problem of modern architecture in Italy and the guiding theme of this study.

the challenge of tradition, 1750–1900

1.3 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Pantheon, design for the attic, 1756

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rome of the nolli plan

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The complex layering found at the Pantheon was merely an example of the vast palimpsest that is Rome itself, and there is no better demonstration of this than the vivid portrait of the city engraved in 1748.The celebrated cartographer Giovanni Battista Nolli and his team measured the entire city in eleven months using exact trigonometric methods. At a scale of 1 to 2,900, the two-squaremeter map sacrifices no accuracy: interior spaces of major public buildings, churches, and palazzi are shown in detail; piazza furnishings, garden parterre layouts, and scattered ruins outside the walls are described with fidelity. Buildings under construction in the 1740s were also included: Antoine Derizet’s Church of Santissimo Nome di Maria at Trajan’s Column, the Trevi Fountain, Palazzo Corsini on Via della Lungara. In the city’s first perfectly ichnographic representation Nolli privileges no element over another in the urban fabric. All aspects are equally observed and equally important.

Vignettes in the lower corners of the map, however, present selected monuments of ancient and contemporary Rome: columns, arches, and temples opposite churches, domes, and new piazzas. Roma antica and Roma moderna face one another in a symbiotic union.

The Nolli plan captures Rome in all its richness, fixing in many minds the date of its publication as the apex of the city’s architectural splendor. It is an illusory vision, however, as Rome, like all healthy cities, has never been in stasis. Nolli’s inclusion of contemporary architecture emphasizes its constant evolution. His plan is neither a culmination nor a conclusion but the starting point for contemporary architecture.The architecture of modern Italy is written upon this already dense palimpsest.

the challenge of tradition, 1750–1900

1.4 Giovanni Battista Nolli, La Nuova pianta di Roma, 1748

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alessandro galilei and san giovanni laterano

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One of the contemporary monuments featured in Nolli’s vignettes was a new facade for the church of San Giovanni Laterano.The basilica, along with its baptistery, was erected by the Emperor Constantine in the year 315. It was, and still is, the pre-eminent liturgical seat in the Christian capital, where the relics of Saints Peter and Paul—specifically, their heads—are preserved.The popes resided at the Lateran through the Middle Ages and it remains today the cathedral of the city of Rome, though it does not enjoy a preeminent urban position or architectural stature; indeed its peripheral site along the city’s western walls and eccentric orientation facing out across the open countryside make the maintenance of its rightful stature, let alone its aging physical structure, extremely difficult.The Church of Saint Peter’s, on the other hand, also Constantinian in origin, had been entirely reconceived under Pope Julius II in the Renaissance and became the preferred papal seat. Meanwhile, the Lateran remained in constant need of repair, revision, and reform.

Pope Sixtus V reconfigured the site by adding an obelisk, a new palace and benediction loggia on the side and later Pope Innocent X set Francesco Borromini to reintegrate the body of the church, its nave, and its double aisles, but his plans for the facade and eastern piazza were left unexecuted. Dozens of projects to complete the facade were proposed over the next seventy-five years until Pope Clement XII announced in 1731 an architectural competition for it.

Clement XII’s idea of a competition was a novelty for Rome, with a published program and projects presented anonymously before an expert jury. It would indeed provide an opportunity for exposure of new ideas and for stimulating discussion. In 1732, nearly two dozen proposals were put on display in a gallery of the papal summer palace on the Quirinal Hill. All the prominent architects of Rome participated, as well as architects from Florence, Bologna, and Venice.

Participants drew up a variety of alternatives ranging, as tastes ran, between a stern classicism to fulsome baroque images after Borromini.

Jury members from the Accademia di San Luca found the projects that followed Borrominian inspiration excessively exuberant and preferred the sobriety of the classical inheritance, and Alessandro

the challenge of tradition, 1750–1900

Galilei emerged the winner.These expressed opinions delineated a polemical moment dividing the baroque from a new classicism.

Galilei was a remote relation of the famous astronomer and followed the papal court from Florence to Rome. Galilei had been active in the rediscovery of classic achievements in the arts and letters in the eighteenth century re-examining Giotto, Dante, and Brunelleschi with renewed appreciation. For example, when asked in 1723 for his opinion on a new baroque-style altar for the Florentine baptistry, Galilei favored preserving the original Romanesque ambience of the interior despite the tastes of his day. A renewed classical sense stigmatized the frivolities of the rococo as uncultivated, arbitrary, and irrational. Clement XII’s competition for San Giovanni may merely have been a means to secure the project less flagrantly for Galilei and to introduce a rigorous cultural policy to Rome.

Roman architects petitioned the pope, livid that their talent went unrewarded, and Clement responded with, in effect, consolation prizes to some of them with commissions for other papal works.

Construction on the Lateran facade was begun in 1733.

Galilei’s facade of San Giovanni Laterano is a tall and broad structure in white travertine limestone.The structure is entirely open to the deep shadowed spaces of a loggia set within a colossal Corinthian order. In a manuscript attributed to Galilei, the architect articulates his guiding principles of clear composition and reasoned ornament, functional analysis and economy. Professional architects, Galilei insists, trained in mathematics and science and a study of antiquity, namely the Pantheon and Vitruvius, can assure good building. Galilei’s handling of the composition has the rectilinear rigor and interlocking precision one might expect from a mathematician.The ponderous form is monumental merely by the means of its harmonious proportions of large canonical elements. It is a strong-boned, broad-shouldered architecture, a match for Saint Peter’s. It demonstrates in its skeletal sparseness and subordination of ornamentation the rational architectural logic attributed to Vitruvius.

Galilei’s images are derived primarily from sources in Rome: the two masterpieces of his Florentine forefather Michelangelo, Saint Peter’s and the Palazzo dei Conservatori at the Capitoline. Galilei’s classicism is a constant strain among architects in Rome who built their

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monumental church facades among the vestiges of the ancient temples. Galilei refocused that tradition upon Vitruvius and in his measured austerity contributed a renewed objectivity to Roman architecture of the eighteenth century.

Galilei’s austere classicism is emblematic of a search for a timeless and stately official idiom at a point in time where these qualities were found lacking in contemporary architecture. Reason, simplicity, order, clarity—the essential motifs of this modern discussion—set into motion a reasoned disengagement from the baroque.With Galilei’s monumental facade, guided in many ways by the pressures of Saint Peter’s, the Cathedral of Rome takes its rightful position, as Nolli’s vignette suggests, a triumphal arch over enthroned Roma moderna.

nicola salvi and the trevi fountain Alongside serious official architectural works on major ecclesiastical sites, eighteenth-century Rome also sustained a flourishing activity in more lighthearted but no less meaningful works.The Trevi Fountain ranks perhaps as the most joyous site in Rome. Built from 1732 to 1762 under the patronage of popes Clement XII, Benedict XIV, and Clement XIII, the great scenographic water display is often described as the glorious capstone of the baroque era.This is indeed where most architectural histories (and tourist itineraries) of Italian architecture end. It is one of those places, like the Pantheon, where the entire sweep of Rome’s culture can be read.

The history of the Trevi Fountain reaches back to antiquity.The waters that feed the fountain today flow through the Aqua Virgo aqueduct originally constructed by Agrippa in 19 B.C.The aqueduct passes mostly underground and was obstructed in the Middle Ages to prevent barbarian infiltration, so it was easily repaired in the Renaissance.The water inspired a succession of baroque designers with ideas for a fountain. As at San Giovanni, a similar architectural competition was opened by Clement XII.With Clement’s own favored Florentine architect, Galilei, already loaded up with projects,

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1.5 Alessandro Galilei, San Giovanni Laterano facade, Rome, 1732–35 1.6 Nicola Salvi with Luigi Vanvitelli, then Giuseppe Panini,Trevi Fountain, Rome, 1732–62. Engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, from Vedute di Roma, c. 1748